Archive for December, 2015

“If there were any doubts about the archdiocese’s pledge to keeping kids safe, the provisions announced today, going beyond what the law would require, should help put those doubts to rest,” Archbishop Bernard Hebda said at a news conference.

In an agreement that attorneys for both parties said went beyond the requirements of the law, the archdiocese has agreed to create an “organizational culture” that protects children in an effort to make sure no child is hurt again.

When I was in third grade, I spent many days playing backyard football with my friends. On one particular occasion, I was tackled on the cement and fractured my left collarbone. I got up and walked home to see my mother for help.

Q. I am wondering about Church law (and your own feelings) on people coming to Mass and being confronted every week with different parish clubs and organizations trying to sell something. I’ve always thought that we go to Mass to show our reverence for the Lord and not to walk into a flea market.

“I am concerned about loving other people as Christ has loved us,” said Deacon Dennis Hanson, who ministers at Holy Name of Jesus in Medina. “It’s about getting people aware and feeling like they can do something about those in need.”

I wasn’t very excited by the prospect of spending St. Patrick’s Day 2013 in Rome. But the executive board of Caritas Internationalis was meeting at that time and I was obligated to be there. My Irish mother had always made sure that we celebrated the patron of Ireland appropriately, and she surely would not have approved of corned beef and rigatoni.

If Catholics in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis were well prepared to implement directives of the Second Vatican Council in the areas of liturgy, social justice and lay involvement, there are reasons: the Benedictines of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Msgr. John A. Ryan and a German immigrant lay woman named Therese Mueller.